About Me

Jim is the author of eight novels, three memoirs and four business books. He made a covered wagon and horseback trip across Texas to retrace the journey his ancestors had made two generations earlier and wrote Biscuits Across the Brazos to chronicle the trip. He traveled the team roping circuit as an amateur and worked roundups on big ranches. Working beside real cowboys sent him back to writing. Using lessons he had learned from more than 10,000 client interviews over thirty years and memories from his rural Texas roots, Jim published five novels in his Follow the Rivers series and three in the Tee Jessup/Riverby series. He has also published three memoirs and story collections.He has been a Writers Digest International Book Contest Finalist.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

I am a Writer Series on Digiwriting

I was recently asked to be a guest on the Digiwriting
blogsite in their I am a Writer Series.
Here are my answers to questions they asked and a link to the site. I
am a Writer Series

How does your geographic location affect your writing?

I’m a native Texan and Texas is where most of the scenes I
write take place. My characters do leave the state, but they only go to places
I have been often enough to establish deep familiarity with the landscape and
the people. If I try to write about a place I have never been, I feel like a
trespasser.

Where do you find your inspiration for characters?

I write what I know. With the exception of my historical
fiction novel, my characters are almost all based on people I know or have
known. And my historical fiction characters are based on characters I knew a
lot about before I included them in the book. All of our lives are interesting
if examined closely. And most are filled with fascinating people. I began
keeping a list of all the characters I have encountered, with special emphasis
on the ones who were the most memorable in a good or bad way. After seven
novels, I still have a long list.

Do you write in more than one genre? Which do you find
the most challenging?

I have written historical fiction that could be classified
as western, though atypical. I have also written family sagas, contemporary
fiction, a non-fiction short story collection, business books, and a memoir. I
find writing technical non-fiction to be the most challenging because every
statement must be researched thoroughly. My first novel started as a memoir,
but I soon realized that I wanted my protagonist to experience very significant
events that had a huge impact on my family. One of those events happened before
I was born. I changed to fiction in order to place the events in a timeline
that seemed more meaningful. Also, our memories are fallible and memoirs should
be completely truthful.

Did you always want to be a writer or did you fall into
the profession?

I fell into it. After preparing approximately 10,000 tax
returns, I was convinced that the country needed to abolish our unfair and
unwieldy tax code and go with a national sales tax. If I truly believed that, I
knew I needed a new profession. Through no particular brilliance or foresight
on my part, I found myself on the leading edge of the fledgling new profession
of financial planning. That led to a new business venture and a training manual
that was published as two books (a peculiar twist of fate brought that about). Those books led to two more business books. Then
I chronicled a horseback trip I took across Texas with a covered wagon. That
memoir inspired the other books.

When you begin to write a story, do you know how it’s
going to end?

Almost always. However, the ending often changes as the
story develops. I like to have an ending in mind so I can foreshadow it,
hopefully without the reader noticing. To paraphrase Chekhov, if there is a
rifle on the wall in the first chapter, it had better be fired at some point.
Knowing the ending is like having a road map. I am inspired to keep a steady
course toward the end.